65 pages • 2 hours read
Heather Ann ThompsonBlood in the Water
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6: “Inquiries and Diversions”
“Anthony Simonetti” Summary
Thompson gives a description of the perspective of Anthony Simonetti. He had worked for Robert Fischer in the Organized Crime Task Force (OCTF), Rochester office. Simonetti was brought to Attica on September 13 by Fischer and would take on most of the responsibility for investigating the uprising and its aftermath. As Thompson notes, his task, and his potential impartiality, were compromised from the start. This was because, first, he was working for Rockefeller, and second because it would be NYS troopers, who had retaken the prison, who would be collecting the evidence for his cases.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Digging More Deeply”
Following the retaking and its controversial events, various committees and investigative groups were set up to look into events at Attica. One, created by Rockefeller, was the Jones Committee. A higher-ranking one, headed by congressman Claude Pepper, was a federal investigate body known as the Pepper Commission. Both groups criticized the existing prison establishment’s poor conditions. They also rejected the claim by Mancusi and Rockefeller that the uprising had been the result of a “conspiracy influenced by Marxists, Maoists, and far leftists, enhanced by an atmosphere of permissiveness in the outside world” (277). Nonetheless, neither group had much effect in altering conditions at Attica, nor did these groups effectively investigate the actual event of the uprising or the calamity of the retaking.
A more genuinely independent, and public, inquiry into Attica was led by Robert McKay, dean of New York University School of Law. Composed of various political and social justice organizations, this team was going to focus solely on the uprising at Attica, not issues in the broader prison system. Its inquiries were undermined by two factors: first, by the almost exclusively White and middle-class composition of the group, and second, by the fact that state investigators had also been recently interrogating prisoners, meaning they were wary now of all interviewers. However, the McKay Commission did publish a report, Attica: The Official Report of the New York State Special Commission on Attica, that was discussed on television and came out as a paperback book. It criticized the barbarism of the retaking and made it clear that this could have been averted. Further, it concluded by stating that the violent retaking was no accident but “a decisive reassertion of the state of its sovereignty and power” (284).
Chapter 31 Summary: “Foxes in the Hen House”
In Chapter 31, Thompson explores the state’s investigation into crimes at Attica, led by Tony Simonetti. The problem for Simonetti’s investigation was that he had to rely on the state police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI). This meant, in effect, that evidence collecting and interviewing were being conducted by individuals who had directly participated in the retaking and hence were potentially guilty of crimes themselves. This was especially the case with regards to Captain Henry Williams, who had been one of the leaders of the assault on D Yard.
Simonetti’s effort to deal with this problem by having BCI men report directly to him failed because Williams was controlling what evidence was reaching Simonetti. Williams was also not cooperating with Simonetti. On the other hand, Williams proved highly cooperative in helping investigate potential prisoner wrongdoing. Specifically, he helped Simonetti investigate the death of William Quinn and the murders of three inmates during the uprising.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Stick and Carrot”
Chapter 32 describes the ways in which Simonetti’s office went about collecting evidence from the prisoners. As mentioned in the previous chapter, this evidence collection was entirely for the purposes of indicting prisoners, not COs or state troopers. Two methods were used to get prisoners “to agree to testify against their own” (294). The first was to offer early parole, commuted sentences, and even pardons, as well as direct financial bribery. However, investigators also used intimidation and violence to try to get prisoners to testify. In one example, a prisoner was beaten when he was unable to corroborate certain “facts” interviewers presented to him. In addition, the threat of indictment was used as a tactic to induce cooperation, as witnessed in the case of inmate David Hightower. Such “carrot and stick” tactics bore fruit. For instance, after being pressured for an 18-month period, prisoner William Locke agreed to testify about the murdered inmates Schwartz and Hess.
Chapter 33 Summary: “Seeking Help”
Thompson begins this chapter with an account of how 50-year-old prisoner George Jones was so depressed with his treatment at Attica that, on November 19, 1971, he hung himself. This fact then leads into a discussion of prisoners’ attempts to resist their continued mistreatment, particularly in connection with their interrogations in Simonetti’s inquiry. This resisting manifested as small acts of rebellion, such as refusing showers and food, and as seeking legal help and injunctions. This latter step was at first frustrated by Judge Curtin, but eventually, in a Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the judge’s ruling was overturned. As such, on December 14, 1971, an injunction was issued forbidding abuse, torture, beatings, and “other forms of brutality” (302). As Thompson notes, however, the abuses continued. For example, “Big Black” Smith was threatened with torture and beatings. Worse, thanks to these interrogation techniques, the state had, by the end of 1971, collected enough evidence to begin criminal indictments against more than 60 prisoners.
Chapter 34 Summary: “Indictments All Around”
A grand jury—a jury to determine whether cases should go to trial—was convened three months after the initial retaking. The prosecution, led by Simonetti, sought indictments for the murder of CO Quinn, the killing of three prisoners during the uprising, and a variety of other crimes allegedly committed by prisoners, including sexual assault, hostage taking, and kidnapping. These proceedings, in Thompson’s view, were marred by bias and prejudice. A year later, in December 1972, the grand jury charged 63 prisoners with over a thousand crimes. Not a single trooper was charged. Large funds were now allocated to the state to pursue these cases.
Part 6 Analysis
In theory, the law in a liberal society is impartial. It is supposed to treat the claims of rich and powerful, poor and weak, with equal weight. It is meant to protect the rights of citizens and investigate possible crimes committed without bias in terms of race, class, or status. This is not how things often work in practice. Certainly, for the surviving inmates at Attica in 1971, not only was the law not impartial when it came to their claims, but it was being used as another weapon by the state with which to attack them. This idea is discussed and revealed in several ways. First, the law had manifestly failed to protect or help the prisoners in the aftermath of the retaking. Take the McKay Committee. As Thompson says, this was “comprised of judges and lawyers, members of the clergy and leaders of various political and social justice organizations who were all formally empowered by the State Supreme Court” (278). However, despite criticizing the state and its treatment of prisoners, it had little direct effect. The abuse, intimidation, and beatings of inmates by COs continued.
Further, efforts to secure formal injunctions against violations of prisoners’ civil rights proved tortuous. Despite blatant evidence of abuse, Judge Curtin created endless delays and obfuscations to the process before eventually being overruled by a court of appeals months afterwards. Even then, this was no guarantee. As inmates well knew, there was a big difference between the existence of a court order injunction and its actual implementation by prison authorities. Moreover, if the law failed to protect them, it failed to offer any justice either. Early on, it became obvious that the state was not interested in investigating crimes committed against prisoners by its employees in the retaking. In fact, this was evident in the way the initial collection of evidence was allowed to proceed. Captain Williams, who was a leader in the retaking:
[…] took it upon himself to make sure as much evidence as possible was collected that might indicate that a prisoner had committed a crime…while also making sure that nothing related to the shooting—shell casings, the weapons themselves—was collected (288).
In fact, he did not just fail to collect evidence that might show state culpability; he actively sought to destroy it. As Thompson notes, on the day of the retaking, he ordered his men to “start a ‘clean-up operation’ of Attica’s yards, its storage rooms, and its tunnels, as well other buildings” (288). Thus, much valuable evidence was likely concealed or destroyed. This also applied to tapes and videos of the retaking. Although it was apparent to Simonetti that these had been tampered with, and that a broader crime and cover-up was taking place, his pushback was half-hearted. Objections were made for form’s sake, but no serious effort was made to control, let alone punish, Williams.
Instead, he focused on his main objective: investigating the inmates. As discussed, much of this process was both immoral and highly illegal. For a start, suspects were not selected based on evidence, but the other way around. That is, there were ‘“pre-selected inmates’ against whom the state was seeking evidence” (296). These were typically the men identified as the leaders of the rebellion and “political” prisoners such as Roger Champen. Having decided these men would be prosecuted, they then set about finding evidence to connect them to the deaths of CO William Quinn and of Kenneth Hess, Barry Schwartz, and Mickey Privitera, the inmates killed during the uprising. Interviews followed a familiar pattern. Already terrified and vulnerable men were shown pictures of the pre-selected suspects. They were then harassed through bribes, threats, and open violence into giving evidence against them. This process could be repeated for months on end. In one case an inmate was approached in his hospital bed and threatened with death if he did not comply.
The unfairness did not end there. In the grand jury for crimes at Attica, the selected inmates would find things were rigged against them in other ways. First, the proceedings took place in a village close to Attica. This meant the jury would be all White and likely know some of the COs who had been taken hostage. Second, no contradictory evidence to the state’s would be heard. Lastly, the state’s evidence would be based almost solely on prisoner testimony, which was often coerced and given by prisoners denied access to lawyers at the time. It was no surprise when the grand jury voted to take the prisoners to a full trial. This is what the state had wanted all along; it would use the legal system, and now over $4.5 million allocated in funds, to punish prisoners again for their rebellion. In the process it also hoped to shift public attention, and the blame, for Attica away from itself and entirely onto the shoulders of the inmates.
